Isn't this just amazing work? Soon enough people will be able to have brand new teeth that fit their gums the perfect way and a fast and efficient manner. Long live 3d printing. At this point it's beyond imagining how far this technology could go. There are some great reviews about that on this local site. A lot of people might find it quite informative.

Indeed, Debera, 3D printing is proving to have far-reaching applications, maybe more than people imagined it would initially. Check out this slideshow I did on 3D printed body parts...this is the future! It's pretty incredible: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=263240

labwa, thanks for telling us about what this is like on the ground. Your experience reinforces what I'm being told by analysts and manufacturers about how fast the dental industry's use of 3D printing is changing. I just wish my own dentist was paying attention and could become motivated to change labs to take advantage of this technology.

Yes Elizebeth you are correct initially i also used to consider that 3D printers are being used by hobbiests only .But after getting information that they are used in dental and automobile labs i am too astonished to see .Using 3D printers in digital labs will help make the models in less time, more sophisticately ,more neatly ,no special knowledge of computer is required this device is user friendly it eliminates the concepts of large racks in the dentist clincs having files of all patients instead by using 3D Printers all files are digitally stored in the computer in CAD format .It is less space occupying as well.

I am a dental technician. We use a scanner from 3shape who specialise in medical scanning.

The scanning can be done intra-oraliy or at a lab with a stone model.

From there with help from 3shape's cad design software we output in a range of formats depending on the manufacturing unit.

For crown and bridge dental restorations the printers must be accurate to 35 micron(mm) or better. The main printers in our industry at the moment are Envisiontec, 3D systems, Objet, Solidscape, and Asiga.

In my opinion this market is changing extremely fast and the labs and dentists left behind will find their work decrease dramaticaly within 5 years.

3D-Printing have exposed denstists to the digital world. Now denstists can replace bulky, physical gooey silicone models with small digital files. Store all of case files digitally, for as long as they need.

JimT, you're totally welcome. I discovered that fact by Googling to find the manufacturer of 3D-Touch. Although the number of different printers has gotten large, the number of 3D printer manufacturers is still very small.

Thanks for sharing that 3D-Touch was a 3D systems discontinuation – I was not aware of that, at all, and was further mis-led by an associate who is trying to market these machines to buyers. Apparently, he has a small quantity of them and is offering them for sale and support, at $3,900 per system. It seems even more un-attractive now that you've disclosed its discontinued manufacturing status. Thanks!

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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